Booth seeks to retain Marussia pair

Marussia team boss John Booth says he is hopeful of being able to field an unchanged driver line-up for the 2014 season.

The Anglo-Russian outfit fielded an all-new line-up for 2013 after signing Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi, with the latter having replaced Luiz Razia when sponsorship issues forced him to give up his drive.

The pair have so far allowed Marussia to gain the upper hand in its battle with Caterham for tenth in the constructors' championship and Booth said he was like to retain both men for next year.

If that were to happen, it would mark the first time that the team had fielded an unchanged line-up since joining F1 as Virgin Racing back in 2010.

"We took a massive gamble with two race novices," Booth was quoted by Sporting Life. "They both had a fair amount of mileage in F1 cars, so it wasn't like they were novices to Formula One.

"But it's been really impressive as to how few mistakes they've both made. With two rookies it could have finished in a right old mess, but you can count on one hand the mistakes made between them.

"I'd like to keep them both for next year. At the moment it depends on a variety of (contract) options and option expires and things like that.

"But we don't intend to leave our decision as late as we did for this year. We're hoping to be a bit more comfortable for this year."

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It would'nt make much difference who they had driving for them they would still be at the back of the field. They will always need to use pay drivers and this will limit their future asperations. In addition I've no doubt Bernie is still trying to find a way of removing them from F1.